Demo performance vs Full game?

[Obscuritan]

So I'm thinking of switching over from M&B original, but having tried the demo on Steam the performance is terrible - full of missing textures and whatever the heck this is: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/23990199383899970/2170CF276743EBE6BC6126ECF06B39FC63E35537/ (I swear I used to have hair!)

I never ran into these problems in the first game (this may just be good luck on my part), but is it this bad in the game itself? Or am I just going to have to put in a bunch of 3rd party bugfixes to get it working properly?

(Unrelated, but upon starting up the demo I got robbed 4 times before I finished the 1st quest. Seriously, screw those Khanate bandits and their lack of head models.)

[Morkonan]

This looks like a graphics/DirectX shader issue, not a "game" issue.

I've never played the demo, but if this was, indeed, a common issue in the demo, I would think someone would have fixed it or at least we'd see more reports. It's likely an incompatibility issue, but that doesn't, necessarily, mean that you'll encounter this in the full Warband.

As far as 3'rd Party bugfixes, there are few of them. That's because there are few "bugs" in the vanilla game and they're generally related to a few hardcoded bugs that aren't gamebreaking, but can't be touched by modders, and occassional isues with corrupted saved game files, generally found more often in modded games in the vanilla game.

What settings do you have access to in the demo? In Warband, proper, you have these sorts of settings: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mount%26Blade/Configuration

As you can see, that's quite a bit of tweaking one can do to the games configuration. There are also additional tweaks available in the game's config file. You can, for instance, choose different versions of DirectX in order to solve potential compatibility issues. You can also make pretty deep, for a game this old, adjustements to rendering effects. If you have such an extensive Options menu available in the demo, try adjusting your rendering engine, disabling particle effects (you can tweak those, using config settings, later) and other variables to see if you can narrow down the problem. Start a new game, each time you test, to rule out corrupted saved game files.

AFAIK, Warband's engin doesn't differ that much from Mount & Blade proper. If you could run that with no rendering artifiact issues, you can probably run Warband as well.

PS - That you have a "hair missing" issue, in my opinion, points to a possible corruption problem. But, that's not the only thing that could case that, especially if your card/drivers is having issues rendering certain effects. But, where saved-game corruption problems or corrupted database issues exist, one possible bug that points to that is "bald characters." It's not "permanent", usually, since a fresh game restart usually can take care of the problem as long as it's not a corrupted saved game that is loaded and local files are verified to be sure they're not corrupted. That your dialogue window shows issues and torch flame (particle effects) issues appear to exist points to something else, IMO.

[Obscuritan]

Thanks for the help - it does have the same options available, and it seems knocking it down from DX9 to DX7 sorted out whatever was causing the problem. Which is odd, since my computer's actually running DX11, and the original game runs fine on DX9. In any case I'll take the plunge, then, and if the game's still giving me grief I can always apply for a refund. Thanks again!

[Morkonan]

Sweet, glad it's now working for you!

With Steam's new refund policies, and the fact that they actually seem to be working, grabbing a deal like this comes with a lot less risk.